Hong Kong joining the US Visa Waiver Program?

[skylee]

It has been reported that the reason why Hong Kong is not in the US Visa Waiver Program is that it is not a sovereign country. And there is a proposal to amend this “technicality” to make it possible to include HK in the programme. I have found a relevant senate bill proposed by a senator from Hawaii called Hirono. And then there are reports about some congressmen from Nevada proposing/ supporting (?) similar/ same (?) bills.

I don’t know how these things work. What are the next steps? (As shown on the webpages the next steps are that the bills will have to be passed by both the Senate and the House and then be made a law by the US President.) How long will these things take? It seems that such bills can be “cancelled” after a long time of inactivity. What should HK people expect? Any explanation/ insight on this is welcome.

BTW, Taiwan has recently been included in the visa waiver programme.

[mikelove]

For a number of reasons, the trend in the US Congress recently has been for most of the meaningful lawmaking to happen through gigantic, all-encompassing pieces of legislation; you wouldn't see a single bill to, say, streamline a particular tax, or change the way doctors are reimbursed for low-income patients, instead you have a "big tax bill" or a "big health care bill" into which everybody tries to cram as many relevant items (and usually a few totally irrelevant ones) as they can manage.

So right now they're in the middle of debating a "big immigration bill," prompted in large part by the results of the recent election, and changes to Visa Waiver are one small part of that - I didn't know they were thinking about Hong Kong, the only one I'd read about related to Poland (granting Poland an exemption from a different rule, one that normally bars from Visa Waiver any country with more than a certain % of rejected visa applications), but it certainly makes sense that they'd be looking at HK too.

Anyway, the "big immigration bill" is more-or-less a must-pass piece of legislation for both parties - there are a few other items in there that pretty much everybody agrees are good ideas - so it's more of a question of whether or not this particular item is included in it than whether the full bill will pass. And to be honest, there are enough other contentious amendments coming up that it's doubtful this one will see much debate, so it all boils down to behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the results of which are difficult to predict - both Nevada and Hawaii make large amounts of money from tourism, and that particular Nevada congressman's district includes Reno (the second biggest gambling city in Nevada after Las Vegas), so it seems likely that this is getting some interest from that sector.

But its low profile actually makes it an excellent target for a blitz from constituents - an influx of calls / faxes / letters (not emails, they ignore those) from people in a particular senator's or representative's district might get him / her to consider supporting this. So if you know any American citizens who'd be sympathetic to the idea of HK being included in VWP then it's worth asking them to contact their senators / representative about it.

As far as timelines, Congress goes on vacation for most of August so it seems very likely that they'll try to get the immigration bill passed before then. If this item is included then it's not clear how long it'll take to implement it after that - I'd venture to guess at least a year, it takes time to draft new regulations / update computers / train border staff on HK passports / translate Visa Waiver materials into Chinese / etc.

[skylee]

Re #2. Thanks very much for the reply.

[skylee]

Edward Snowden has been granted asylum in Russia for one year. But because of him the subject matter of this thread will not happen any time soon.

Relevant thread -> http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41085-snowdens-case-us-surveillance-of-telecommunication/